Antivan Peaches Do Not Bruise
by Dinosaur Theology
Summary: "I just don't understand your concern, Lady Montilyet. Inquisitor Trevelyan is taking me along to wear heavy armor. He's not going to ask me to dance."


"I just don't understand your concern, Lady Montilyet." Blackwall stood and bowed stiffly to her, like one with not much practice at formal styling-perhaps his point. "Inquisitor Trevelyan is taking me along to wear heavy armor, catch arrows in my shield and engage any chevaliers that Duke Gaspard might have brought along so that he can concentrate on maintaining our barriers and manipulating the flow of battle. He doesn't want me to dance." The word burst forth with bitterness that might have been, in another lifetime, regret. He snorted a laugh deep in that thicket of black beard before turning to go. "I'm a Champion, after all, not a courtier."

"Ah, but they are not mutually exclusive, Warden Blackwall." She slipped smoothly along the room, a gold and purple shadow, to lay soft pressure on his big shoulder. "Your friend Lord Chancer de Lion tells me that many of the greatest chevaliers become Champions, to one lord or another, as you are to Inquisitor Trevelyan."

He grunted. "Chancer talks too much."

"Besides, you might look at this as another kind of warfare" She giggled in the way he found overwhelmingly endearing. "When one dances at the Winter Palace in Halamshiral it is not so different than when the field of battle swirls around him."

He could have told her so, so much but would have faced the noose before watching her face break, the blood and sweetness draining from her cheeks in equal measure. So he turned, instead, and said, "All right, but I'm a great, clumsy oaf so watch your feet-I'd not break them. That's why I stand still and hold a shield instead of leaping around like young Cole or Sera."

"You will be fine. I've watched you at practice with Chancer and the others. You're as fast as Cullen or Chancer, though both must be five years your junior, and can move almost as well as Cassandra or Thram." She sighed and then reddened, perhaps realizing that she had admitted to watching him and the other warriors practicing. "That's no surprise. It is rare the man who can move as well as a woman."

"If you insist, m'lady." He raised assumed what he must have considered the appropriate position for waltzing, one hand raised. He resembled either a great, furry tree or the feature of architecture from which he took his name.

"No, no, like this." She slipped her small, brown hand into the palm of his enormous, callused paw. Maker, the bones must have been almost as big as Iron Bull's! No wonder he could take the abuse he was expected to in his role as Enchanter Trevelyan's Champion. Taken a little aback Josephine guided his other hand to her waist. It lay there surprisingly light, considering the strength she knew lay dormant in the man... but, she reflected, almost incalculable gentleness and nobility dwelt in him, too.

"Well?" He smiled. "I'm not complaining, but this is standing and holding a lovely woman-at least at arm's length. Not dancing."

"Now..." she gazed up at him with those deep, impossibly consuming eyes, dark as the great Western Abyss and as beautiful as it was terrible. "Now we move. Just follow me. Pretend there is music; I have an enchanted music box, but it is in my bedroom with my dolls." She colored, again, like she always did when the matter of the doll collection arose. Sera found it dreadfully amusing, but Blackwall had not noticed his odd little friend declining to play with the ambassador with them. "Pretend you did not hear that."

"It falls on deaf ears, m'lady."

She nodded, apparently satisfied. "Good. That's good. My collection is my own business. If I had one, that is. Now..." They swayed together, taking the steps with excrutiating slowness, for over an hour. Josephine seemed far more satisfied with his progress than Blackwall himself, even going so far as to call him a promising student. He knew her to be above mockery, of course, but Maker... coming out of any mouth those words might have sounded like it.

Some days later and momentous events later, the aftermath of Celene's masquerade found the Inquisition's Inner Circle on the floor of the Winter Palace's Grand Ballroom. They had stripped to their leathers and linens and, streaked with sweat, blood and grime danced under the watchful mask of a grateful empress and the small, elven redhead whose fine-boned hand she clutched like lichen. Cassandra and Trevelyan swayed in a dark corner, lost in their own hazy world and each other, and Dorian and Iron Bull tossed a giggling Sera back and forth between them while Varric and Leliana provided scintillating, naughty color commentary from the sidelines. Vivienne, so above it all, hovered protectively near the empress like the trained Knight Enchanter she prided herself on being and Solas... well... neither the odd elf nor Cullen had remained for this portion of the festivities, it seemed.

Blackwall slumped near the polished marble's edge. He was as pleased, bruised and bloody as all his companions, but could not shuck the heavy, volcanic aurum Battlemaster's armor he wore. It was dented and scratched in all the wrong places, the Inquisition heraldry all but raked from the cuirass by a lesser terror's long talons and would likely be removed from his carcass only by the combined efforts of Harritt and Dagna.

"Warden Blackwall, look at you!" It was Josephine. She offered her a shy smile. "I know that you are dedicated beyond reason to our dear Inquisitor's safety, ser, but just a few moments rest out of that heavy armor would not be amiss, no?"

"I think we're pretty safe here, yes," he said. "All the Venatori I've seen were accounted for, unless they rise again as walking corpses."

She shuddered. "Perish the thought. They are enough trouble when you only have to kill them the one time. So... why are you still a Battlemaster and not a master of the dance? I believe we practiced for this occasion..."

"Because, m'lady, this bloody armor is clutching tighter to me than yon empress to Ambassador Briala. It binds in the most uncomfortable ways."

"Oh." Ever the diplomat, Josie's fingers flew to her lips to stifle a laugh. "Oh, my dear."

"So in spite of the straits I find myself in, I saw no reason that the rest of our friends should not enjoy a short respite in these..." he glanced around, as if unsure that Halamshiral's opulent Winter Palace surrounding him was real, "most agreeably disagreeable environs."

"No, no, this will not do." Josie sauntered towards him, ruffled gold and purple silk dress rustling around a lithe figure which the Warden had found himself considering far, far too often since it had been pressed against him as they danced in his office. "Everyone else is having such a good time, the kind that only comes with victory and utmost relief." She spared a glance for Trevelyan and his consort, how Cassandra's smudged face lay limp on his shoulder and that they all but slept in each other's arms. Bull, Dorian and Sera were far more... animated and, all indications were, thoroughly inebriated. "Some of us more than others, I believe."

"Pah, they're young. Well, Sera and Dorian are... you can never tell with Qunari. We've struck a blow tonight, and it's even sweeter than an honorable man like Gaspard did not have to die in the process."

"I think, Ser Blackwall, that you are simply avoiding the dance floor because you have not been presented with an appropriate partner." She stepped closer to him, offered her hand like she had in the expansive office she occupied at Skyhold. "As the Inquisition's Ambassador it would look most ill if I allowed our esteemed representative from the Grey Wardens to languish like an orchid dying on the Winter Palace wall."

"Dance with you in this armor? I'm all edges and bolts; you're lace and bows. You're mad, woman." He chuckled, deep in his beard. The pleasant, baritone rumble made the hairs on the back of Josie's neck rise. "You'd be bruised all over like an overripe Antivan peach."

She rolled her dark, absorbing eyes, took his right hand and guided the other to her slim waist. "You betray your provincial, Markham origins, Warden. Antivan peaches do not bruise." She smiled, showing off the almost imperceptible gap between her front teeth that he found so adorable. "We dance. Now."

"As you insist, Lady Montilyet." It would be a lie to say that they moved to the music. The layers of golden metal encasing Blackwall's imposing form made this nigh an impossibility. Yet they stood close and, for a moment or two at least, each swore that through the cracked and dented breastplate that the beating of the other's heart could be heard. 


End file.
